Eat More to Lose Fat - The Truth Behind Undereating

00:00This is like the honest truth of how it is to get the body that you want. Eating more to lose more. Stop these cycles of 1,100 calories and eating less and moving more and driving your body into the ground. What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkie Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. And on this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

00:39I'm your host, Nikkie Stott, and welcome, my friends, to another episode, episode number 272. And before we even dive into this episode, guys, I am still speechless that we have hit the 1 million downloads. 1 million downloads. Like, I'm just still so honestly blown away. You've, you, each individually, like, each day have taken your time out of your life to listen to this, these episodes, to learn from these episodes.

01:17But again, most importantly, like, to show up for yourself. By you guys clicking on the episodes every day, whenever they come out, the new ones, you show up for yourself in some way or another. And that truly matters so deeply to me. So, again, just, like, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This podcast is truly built, like, it's on your trust and on you guys, like, just taking the information and going and running with it and applying it to your life.

01:50And all I ask is that, like, you do that and then what I pray for is that there's just some big transformations for you guys that happen. All right. So, today's episode, we're diving into something real, as every episode. But most importantly, I want to dive into some, like, science-backed. Honestly, like, this episode, I hope, is life-saving for you guys, for both your body and for your mindset. So, with that being said, like, I want to talk a little bit about the truth behind under-eating.

02:22Like, you guys know that I say and preach that you need to eat more to lose more. But I know that y'all have heard growing up that you need to eat less, you need to cut calories, and then you need to just be consistent. And, yes, like, you can start your journey by eating less, but it's not like the end-all, be-all. You can't continue to do that on a weekly, monthly basis, yearly basis. And especially if you're stuck, like, if your energy is flat, if your workouts feel heavy, if, in fact, like, on your body isn't budging,

02:59then it's time to totally flip that script. So, if you guys are experiencing that right now, maybe you've been living in the world of, I need to eat less, eat less, eat less, because that's what I've been raised to think and believe, and I just need to cut calories if I want to lose weight. But you're experiencing all of these types of emotions, feelings in your body with being tired, energy's flat. Like I said, I need you, like, listen up, listen up. Because the brutal truth is that what, like, overall, what I want you guys to understand is your metabolism adapts.

03:39So, when you are underfed and you're underfeeding yourself consistently, your body thinks, it goes back to the, like, the Wild Wild West days. The back, like, caveman days. Maybe not the Wild Wild West. But it thinks you're in, like, a famine. And it shifts into conservation mode. It shifts into this, like, the aspect of it will reduce your metabolic rate to preserve energy for you, to keep you alive.

04:11It basically puts you into survival mode. It will slow your hormones down, especially your thyroid. So, if anybody has thyroid issues, a side note, rant. I was talking to my creative director and our, like, creative team the other day. And thyroid just made me think about this. But I was talking about back 10 years ago when I was in the nursing field, one of the biggest reasons why I left the nursing field. And I know this made, like, disrupt some thoughts or whatever. But I'm just here to place my own personal opinion.

04:43And here it is. I saw so many things on a daily basis. The medications being handed out to treat symptoms, mask symptoms, and not ever be looked at. Let me find the root cause of things. So, thyroid makes me think. A lot of women have thyroid problems. And what wasn't being taught in the, like, in where I worked in the ER or, geez, I mean, you know, long-term health or the nursing home. That's just another story for another day.

05:14But mainly the hospital setting, teaching people about nutrition. And when I did get to sit in on a nutrition consult, it was still information on eating 1,100 calories a day and no emphasis on protein. But anyway, to end this rant, if women have thyroid problems, instead of being tossed medications to mask symptoms, I firmly believe that nutrition needs to be looked at. And I guarantee that a lot of these things can be fixed from a better nutritional diet on a daily basis.

05:52Okay. The rest of my case. What happens when you do not eat enough is your metabolism is adapting to this and it goes in survival mode. Reduces your metabolic rate. It slows your hormones. It slows your thyroid down. It slows your hunger hormone down, leptin. It increases your cortisol, which promotes fat storage, especially around your belly. It breaks down muscle for fuel. Let me say that one again. It breaks down your muscle for fuel.

06:23How counterproductive is that for those of you that want to be more toned, look more toned, have like that beautiful feminine muscular body, you know, with a little bit of muscle in your arms and a little bit of muscle in your legs and those glutes popping. And those abs showing, okay, if you're not eating enough, your body's going to the first fuel source, which is your muscle because it's active tissue. It does not stop revving. It needs constant fuel. It's going to go there.

06:53It's going to use that muscle for energy and it's going to break it down. It's counterproductive. And that is why of all those things that you just heard me say is why you feel tired. It's why you hit a plateau or even worse, you feel worse even while you're eating less. And before I continue on, I want you guys to know one, it's not your fault. It's the overall, it's a system trying to protect you. Okay. And it's the marketing and the things that you've been brought up and believed in and have heard and said and read about.

07:28It's not your fault. But this is one of the reasons why I believe that I've been put on this earth to share my God gift skill set to you guys is I understand where you're at. But I've coached thousands of women through what you may be experiencing right now. And this is where I want to flip the script with you guys if you still find yourself in this position. And I know it's scary. It's scary to think like if I eat more, I'm going to like it's it that sounds counterintuitive. And I get it.

07:58But it's because of those stories and narratives that you've been thought to believe. But up until this point, I want to break those narratives because I want you to feel like your absolute freaking best. Okay. So I want to flip the script. Why eating more is exactly what your body needs. It needs more food to rebuild the engine. Like think of your metabolism like a fire. Under eating starves the flames. And then eating strategically, especially in a little bit of it, either your maintenance or a little bit of surplus to get your metabolism to rev back up, which I call the retraining process.

08:38Then it basically think of like that fire being rekindled. That is your metabolism. So when you start eating more food. And so many women are probably listening to this and they've been in the warrior babe retrain process with our coaching team. And they're probably like, yeah, that actually works. But let me ask you women. Did you think that beforehand when you first signed up? I bet you had all the emotions of which you were scared. You were afraid. You didn't understand. It sounded counterintuitive. But you still put your foot forward and you trusted us. And I always say trust us.

09:10I believe this later. And then now your metabolism is on fire because you're eating more food. And your body's like, thank you for finally giving me more food. You guys remember me talking about my hero of a client. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss.

09:43Warrior babe is here for you. At warrior babe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results and results that last. Look, don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation.

10:15That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right, let's get back to the show. That I coached for five years, four or five years. She ended the program around 60 years old. I think she said that she came in around like her later 50s. Dude, she was eating 3,300 calories a day to build muscle. Initially, she came in in a build. She understood. And those of you guys don't know what a build is.

10:46It's like you're eating a little bit more of a surplus of what I'm talking about. This is why I so heavily try and rewrite the narrative in terms of like age is just a number. Or I'm too old to build muscle. And I say age is just a number. Or it's too late for me to build muscle. And then I use these stories like Cheryl. She gained muscle mass. And then we cut back her calories and put her into a fat loss phase.

11:17And she dropped fat. She kept her strength. And dude, her body looked completely different. She completely transformed her body. Also, why eating more is exactly what your body needs is you're going to have better energy. And you're going to have a better workout. You're going to have better recovery. When you have the right nutritional demands given to your body, your workouts feel way easier. You lift heavier. You sleep better. And your recovery happens so fast. And what y'all want is you get those sexy muscles.

11:50You get that toned look to your body because you're eating more food. And then at the same time, bringing back like the thyroid kind of thought process to this point is your hormones start to balance. I have seen this. I got to say at least over 2,000 women have brought to the table how they have naturally rebalanced their hormones just by eating a better balanced nutritional diet and moving their body. Eating enough carbs, eating enough protein, and eating healthy fats will balance your cortisol levels.

12:21It will support your thyroid function and it will stabilize your blood sugar and it will help to regulate all of the processes in your body that may be off. A.K. it's going to rebalance your hormones. And then it's going to like you stop when you stop this cycle of basically starvation. 1,100 calories, 1,000 calories, 700 calories, 800 calories, eating one meal a day. Dude, like when you stop that and you refeed your body consistently, your metabolism talks back to you.

12:56It will reward you. It will allow fat loss to actually start happening without you suffering. That is a solid foundation for long-term success and long-term results and long-term change. So instead of this like I'm going to do this for six weeks and I'm going to basically go into suffering mode. If you can get rid of the starvation aspect of these quick fixes and you can rewire your mind to play the long game, you're going to have long-term results. Hey, while you're listening, if you're getting value from this episode, take a moment to tap that review button or share this podcast with a friend.

13:34It's a small gesture that goes a long way in helping more women find their way to feeling stronger and more confident in their skin. I appreciate you so much for taking the time to support this show. And then like I just want this all to like just like to take a deep breath and just let this all sink in. You may be wondering, okay, I hear you. I'm understanding what you're saying. It's definitely sinking. I'm where you're at. I don't even know where to start. Protein is your best friend. Protein is non-negotiable. You've heard me say protein so many episodes by now.

14:07You need to aim on a daily basis for one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, then you should be eating 150 grams of protein in a day. Protein will protect your muscle. Protein will repair, fuels repair, and it stabilizes your appetite and your blood sugar throughout the day. So there's no more of these crashes. There's no more of these cravings when you have enough protein on a regular basis. You need to focus on implementing carbs.

14:40I don't care. I do care if it scares you. But I want you to look at that story that you're telling yourself of carbs make you fat. Is it actually a fact or is it just a story? And I need you to get real with yourself. And when you tried to go low carb or you cut out carbs, were you actually consistent with doing that? And then also I need you to keep in mind when you cut carbs out regardless, carbs hold on to water. So what you're seeing when you actually step on the scale is not fat loss.

15:12It's water loss. So you need to feed your body carbs. You need to feed it specifically like whole food carbs, like oats, like rice, like potatoes, like fruits. Some veggies have fiber and carbs in it. Basically, what carbs do is they feed your workouts. They support your hormonal balance, especially around your workouts. You should be having carbs pre and post workout. And it doesn't if you're a morning workout person, it doesn't need to be this, you know, a whole full meal at the beginning of the day.

15:50You can just have maybe some Greek yogurt in one of those little pouches and throw in some fruit there. That's what I've been doing when I am rolling out of the bed lately at 5 a.m. in the morning. And now I know that I need to put some food in my body. I have specific the okios yogurt in the fridge and I have raspberries that I pour into it. That's all you need just to start the day, to start before your workout. So you basically hear me right now, the macro, like macronutrient tracking. Like you need to have a balanced plan that focuses on all three of these.

16:26Fats like avocado, olive oil, seed, nuts, fish. Which they help you keep, they help to keep you satisfied. They help to keep hormonal function going. You see like each of these macronutrients help in some way manage and balance your hormones. And most importantly, these guys all work together. They perform the best when you have all three of them because they feed off of each other. And so when you start to implement these things, because you're like, I want to start doing better.

16:57First, just start with protein. And then use like a journal, use a tracker, use MyFitnessPal, use something just for insight, not for micromanaging, just for you to have some type of awareness to the data. And you're going to adjust based on your progress and your energy. And the goal is eat enough of the right stuff consistently on a daily basis. And then some of you guys may, some like light bulbs may have been going off when I was talking about Cheryl, when I was talking about like a fat loss and a build. And what I want to bring to the table right now is talking a little bit of high level on those things.

17:29The fat loss and muscle growth are better achieved through strategic cycling phases, not you being in a six week quick fix program and then basically coming out of that. And you haven't built the mindset for you establishing the solid foundation of the habits that you may have implemented along those six weeks because it's way too long for a habit to be entirely formed and fleshed out in six weeks.

17:59And instead of you going through that over and over and over again, what we do at Warrior Babe is, first of all, we meet you where you're at. We understand what you need the most, but we go through cyclical phases of either a fat loss, of being in maintenance, of being in build, whatever you need to facilitate the results that you want to get with your body composition. And that's so individual for everybody. So I can't speak to exactly what you should be doing. That's listening to the, you know, one of you listeners.

18:30It's very different for everyone. Once we get to know and understand exactly who you are, your lifestyle and the type of body that we're working with. But if I was to talk about high level, like putting you, putting people in a build, a build is just you eating like above maintenance by like five to 15%. And you're training heavy, you're tracking your macros and you're basically what you're doing here. You're rebuilding your metabolic capacity. Because if you've been in starvation mode for so long and you try and go back, you sign up, just for example, you sign up for Warrior Babe and you're like, I need to lose weight.

19:07But you've been eating 1100 calories every single day for the past five years. It will be so dumb of us as professional coaches to put you at that same number and expect any type of result. So just hear me out there. What we need to do is wake up your metabolism like I've been talking about in this episode. And so we will slowly increase your calories above the 1100. We'll go 1200 one week, we'll go 1300.

19:39Maybe we can push for 1450. Then we can push for 1550. Then maybe we can push for 1700. But all the while, we're paying attention to how your body is handling those increases. Like Cheryl, she worked her way up to 3300 calories while we were in this type of phase. And for her, it went, I would say, nine months. I don't remember. Everybody's is totally different. But then from there, okay, we woke up her metabolism. We worked on the rebuilding that metabolic capacity.

20:09She's eating more. She's not gaining any type of weight that's like alarming. She's building some muscle. We're coasting. When we feel like our body is holding it well, and this is what our coaches do, then we're like, okay, let's pull it back. So for example, you could be eating 1100 calories. You could be increasing in numbers with calories and macros. And you may not even gain any type of weight. But what's happening is your metabolism internally is like, hey, thank you so much.

20:41And then from there, we, okay, so we're back at like, I don't know, like build phase. We're done. We've reached the type of goal we want to reach. And we want to now work on chipping away this body fat because your metabolism, your metabolic capacity is healthy. And so we can shift into a slight deficit while you're maintaining the protein number and you're working out. And then this is where we start to reveal muscle without shutting down your metabolism.

21:16Because what we're doing is that protein is holding onto the muscle mass that you've worked so hard to build. And it's starting to decrease the body fat around it, which is making you look more toned. Because if you come into the program eating 1100 calories and you don't have any muscle mass on your body, again, example, and then we try and cut it. You're going to look like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. But if you want to have muscle to be more toned, to have that sexy, doesn't even, you don't. And when people think about that, they think about, oh my gosh, I'm really bulky.

21:47Ladies, that's not going to happen. You can build the sexy, like small toned arms. But everything I'm here saying here has to be applied to do that. And then you can cycle in and out of doing this. You can go, Cheryl went into a build and a cut and a build, maybe even maintenance at some points and maintenance is just basically you hanging out the same calorie numbers and macro numbers for a little bit of time, making and balancing out your metabolism again. If the cut, you know, went a little bit or, you know, you've been, you can't stay in a

22:18cut for too long because that's when your metabolism can adapt to that lower intake. And if you get too low, you're not, there's nothing more that we can do with your body at that point. So all in all to say this, like this type of cycle, and this may not make sense for a lot of you guys, because maybe you've never heard this before. And that's why I'm here to share this type of knowledge with you guys and make those light bulbs go off. But this type of cycle is your secret sauce to long term, life friendly, sustainable results.

22:54So you over two and a half, three year, two year, three years, Cheryl did the, like I said, she went into a build, she went to a cut, she went to a build, she went to a cut. Dude, she ended leaner, she ended stronger, she ended more like hormonally intact. And she's now 60 years old, dude. She looks like she's like 45, like took 15 years off her life and is so healthy and so strong. Doesn't even look like the before picture. She's gained so much muscle. Why this works and why it matters.

23:26You're retraining your metabolism, you're building muscle, your body now is getting the nutritional balance that it needs. So it's then less sensitive to cravings, it's less sensitive to stress, it's less sensitive to not not getting good sleep. The most important thing is you fall in love with your body's strength and resilience. Dude, you guys, you get so much mental clarity when you move your body and you work out on like an insistent basis. And then you stop this diet stress. You stop at on a year, like you'll realize once you can nail this down, and I'm not saying

24:00this is going to happen overnight. But when you do nail this down, and I'm sure warrior babes are like, yes, they're living this right now. You stop this like diet stress on a yearly basis, where every March, April comes around, you're like, oh my gosh, I need to lose. I need to lose 10 pounds by summertime, I need to lose 20 pounds, I need to lose 30 pounds. And you actually start thriving because you have this knowledge to act on. And you're eating healthy and living healthy and moving healthy.

24:34So just you guys deserve like this kind of plan, this kind of consistency is this kind of scientifically sounds, you know, like, this is like the honest truth of how it is to be to get the body that you want. Eating more to lose more. Stop these cycles of 1100 calories and eating less and moving more and driving your body into a freaking into the ground.

25:05And then my brain just goes back and then ending up in the hospital in like 510 years with some type of disease or diagnosis. And it's because you didn't move your body or feel your body appropriately. I hope that this resonate with you guys. I hope that you guys are ready to just like show your commitment, show your commitment to trying what I'm saying and all of these episodes, there's 272 of them. If you're new, welcome. If you've been listening to everyone, thank you. If you listen to a few here and there, and you've been implementing things, thank you.

25:37All I ask is just implement these things I'm teaching you guys. So many women have had huge transformations by just listening to this podcast. And that's it. This podcast is free. All right. I love you guys. Screenshot this. Tag me on Instagram. Tag me what mind-blowing moment or whatever feed, whatever thing that you took away from this episode. I want to celebrate you guys. I want to share you guys. I want to DM you guys and chat with y'all. So start showing up for yourself. Start building. Start feeling. Start living. Start, you know, doing all these things that we're saying here.

26:09I love you guys. And I'll see you guys in the next episode. Peace out. Real quick. If this episode resonated with you or gave you the push that you needed, I'd love for you to pay it forward. Drop a quick rating and review. Share the podcast with someone who might need it and help me keep spreading the word. Your feedback not only helps to show grow, but it might just be the nudge someone else needs to kickstart their transformation. Thank you so, so, so much for your support. Thank you. Thank you.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.